My Story… Part 12

     Needless to say that the news my dad had just figued out on his own took him back. He was shocked. It was written all over his face. His face also had a puzzled look about it.

     He looked me in the eye with his voice beginning to crack and asked, “I’m really going to be a grandpa?”

     He started to smile and when I acknowledged, he gave me a big bear hug. We cried a few seconds.

     This moment is one of the most special moments I have had with my dad. I viewed the situation as a time we went “toe to toe” with words before I broke him down with news I knew that could have been catastrophic. I didn’t know which way he would go with what he just learned.

     For once in my life, I finally made my father happy. I had screwed up alot of things in my life that he wanted me to succeed in, but this was the ultimate prize to him. I finally made my father proud and I relished in that moment and all through the pregnancy and past the birth. This was the happiest man on the earth, and accidentally, I made him that way.

     We talked late into that night about what my plans were. He preached to me about fatherhood and how he would whip my butt if I tried to pull a fast one and leave. I never had that idea in my head. Losers do that. I told him that this is what I had done, and I will not run from it.

     My dad laid off me about the phone from then on, knowing that I had bigger things to spend my money on and plans to arrange. She finished the first semester about a month later at Michigan Tech and that was it. I went up to help her pack her things and moved her back down into her mom’s house.

     Her mom gave me the same speech about how I better not ditch her daughter. Her mom was cool. I had a good relationship with her. But she did have rules and you better follow them.

     For the next few months we planned our moves, our lives. In the mean time I was to tell my mom and she was going to tell her dad the news. Her dad blew it off, seeming not to really be affected by it. My mom on the other hand…

My Story…Part 9

     As I worked at the natural gas company my dad’s friend got in on a temporary basis, I began to like the working world, the money, and the freedom I felt as I was working. I knew I had a mission to work here and return to college in the fall, but things started to look different to me.

     My friends were here. They were not going to school. They were getting real jobs. They were making plans for life and in a way, settling down, and moving out from their parents house.

     I felt kind of odd. I was starting to not wanna go back to school after 2 months of working. I wanted to build my life. I wanted independence. I wanted to move on with life. As I was seeing the friend of my sister’s and getting more serious with our relationship, we talked about life.

     The only problem with this relationship was she was going to start attending Michigan Technological University in the fall. I didn’t wanna go back to school because our plans to see each other involved long bus rides and long distnace phone calls. Ferris State and Michigan Tech were 6 hours away from each other. It would have sucked.

     As I kept my options open, a permanent job opened up 2 weeks from the end of my temporary term. In 3 weeks I was supposed to return to school. I put in for it and was offered the job. The new boss gave me a week to make my final decision.

     I made my decision to take it, but before I made it official, I had to bring it up with my dad. I knew there was going to be an argument about what I intended to do. And when I sat him down, there was.

     He didn’t want me turning this job into a permanent position. He wanted me to finish school. But I had a card up my sleeve with something he told me about a choice he made in his younger years. A decision he made and was living with at the time. And when I played that card, he gave in.

     My dad had done the same exact thing! He was in the same situation I was in, and he took his job where he would work for 40 years before he retired. But at the time of this discussion, I told him he did it! Why can’t i?

     He had no rebuttal. He let it go. He said he wanted me to go to school at a local college to slowly get the journalism degree I had started working on. He also said he hopes I knew what I was doing. I told him I did. Or so I thought.